September 13, 2017

1. Provide notice to TSX as soon as the dividend/distribution has been declared and at least seven (7) trading days’ notice to TSX prior to the record date.

2. File TSX Reporting Form 5, Dividend/Distribution Declaration as soon as the dividend/distribution has been declared. You must file TSX Reporting Form 5 by TSX SecureFile.

3. Call Kay Dhanraj (416-947-4663) at TSX to:

a) Confirm the details of information of TSX Reporting Form 5, and
b) Discuss the filing of a Form 5 for a suspended dividend/distribution.

…Do not send TSX a copy of the news release as written advice of the dividend/distribution. Dividend/distribution announcements are usually part of a longer news release. To avoid TSX missing certain information, you are required to file TSX Reporting Form 5.

Do not publish the ex-dividend date unless Ms. Dhanraj has confirmed it.

AltaGas Ltd. (“AltaGas”) (TSX:ALA) announced today that the September dividend will be paid on October 16, 2017, to common shareholders of record on September 25, 2017. The ex-dividend date is September 21, 2017. The amount of the dividend will be $0.175 for each common share. This dividend is an eligible dividend for Canadian income tax purposes.

AltaGas Ltd. (“AltaGas”) (TSX:ALA) announced today that it has revised the ex-dividend date of the September dividend to be paid on October 16, 2017, to common shareholders of record on September 25, 2017. The ex-dividend date is revised from September 21, 2017 to September 22, 2017.

The Canadian central bank took the unusual step this week of publicly rebutting criticism by the chief economist of one of the country’s biggest banks. Doug Porter of Bank of Montreal wrote in his weekly note on Sept. 8 that the bank had failed to sufficiently communicate its intention to raise its benchmark interest rate — a move that many economists rather shockingly didn’t see coming.

The critique clearly struck a nerve with the Bank of Canada, and spokesman Jeremy Harrison came out swinging. Harrison said the bank indicated in July that policy would be forward-looking and data-dependent. And while most economists didn’t forecast a step up last week, Harrison said that financial markets saw it as a more or less 50-50 proposition.

Sure. All true. But why be so defensive? This response to an outsider’s critique makes the Bank of Canada look vulnerable and unsure of itself. Worse, it risks creating the perception that the bank will respond to economist notes that it doesn’t like or that it feels are wide of the mark. Investors could end up speculating that the central bank’s silence about some economist’s note is equal to an endorsement. This kind of speculation is exactly what banks want to avoid by trying to be tempered in their public statements. And the bank surely doesn’t want broadsides against analysts to be another form of forward guidance. That would be a mistake.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.45%, equivalent to 7.08% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates now yield 4.00% so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) is now about 310bp, a marked widening from the 300bp reported September 6.

HIMIPref™ Preferred IndicesThese values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ IndicesValues are provisional and are finalized monthly

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2017 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.